The spotlight shines on solo holiday stories

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

Actors Janice Terukina, BullDog, center, and Moses Goods get into the spirit for "Christmas Talk Story," a production of Honolulu Theatre for Youth and Kumu Kahua Theatre. Brad Goda 'Christmas Talk Story' Best-of performance by Honolulu Theatre for Youth in partnership with Kumu Kahua 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. tomorrow and Dec. 6, 13 and 20; 3:30 p.m. Sunday and Dec. 7, 14 and 21; sign-interpreted show, 3:30 p.m. Dec. 14 Tenney Theatre, St. Andrew's Cathedral Tickets: $16 ($12 students) Reservations: 839-9885 Also: A new book-and-CD combo, "Honolulu Theatre for Youth Presents Christmas Talk Story" (Bess Press, $14.95) is in stores now.

But what of those productions — such as the annual Honolulu Theatre for Youth/Kumu Kahua production "Christmas Talk Story," opening this weekend — in which a lone actor is the whole cast?

"If you get lost," says actress Janice Terukina, 38, "there's nobody. Nobody's got your back."

Terukina is one of three actors in the production, each of whom has to memorize and act in five or six short playlets, inhabiting the words, and the stage, all on their own. It's Terukina's first year with HTY — she's been on the Mainland for the past 12 years, with the East-West Players, an all-Asian theater group — and she's doing six pieces plus some songs.

"My brain is like Jell-O," she moaned. Not only does she have to memorize the songs by listening to them over and over (because she doesn't read music) but she's also having to master several different types of pidgin. Turns out 'Aiea pidgin — which she grew up speaking — isn't the same as town pidgin, and old pidgin isn't the same as new. "Making me mental," she muttered.

Honolulu Theatre for Youth artistic director Mark Lutwak, whose idea it was to create the annual holiday show, says the format appears simple, but is not. While the set is pretty much imaginary and the costuming almost non-existent, the lack of these props to the imagination throws more weight on the writing and acting.

The theater has learned through trial and error that first-person stories work best, keeping the actor firmly connected to the material. Rehearsals are intense one-on-one sessions with the actor and Lutwak.

"It's actually the hardest thing we do and it's very, very exciting rolling a new actor through this. It's so intense, a very naked experience for the actor, who is talking directly to the audience, you really have to open up your soul," said Lutwak.

"It's different from the usual play in that it's a storytelling experience — there's no fourth wall, we break down the fourth wall and play straight to the audience," explained BullDog, another of this year's actors and a veteran of previous productions. "Of course, the events happen in the past, but we're telling the story as if the character is discovering new things about it through the telling — something about himself or his family or about what Christmas is."

The plays, which are commissioned from writers throughout the Islands, are different in another way: They aren't, like HTY productions throughout the year, age-specific. Rather, they must appeal to an all-ages audience eager to capture that sometimes elusive holiday spirit.

One of Terukina's works is a piece that first saw life in a slightly different form in The Honolulu Advertiser — former Advertiser columnist Linda Tagawa's "Rubba Slippa," about all the different uses for the common rubber slipper. The story ends with a mother's request for a simple, Longs-type rubber slipper for Christmas because, as she says, "You nevah can tell when gon come in handy." It's told from the point of view of a child, but also captures the common sense so many of us cherish in our old-fashioned parents or grandparents.

This year's presentation, the sixth annual show, is a "best-of" retrospective and playwright Y York (Lutwak's partner in art and life), who developed some of the first "Christmas Talk Story" pieces, said the yearly event has become her holiday touchstone.

Living far from her family in Florida is difficult, she said, and the production allows her to connect with her artistic family here. "I don't participate in the shopping part of Christmas and it can really be a very sinking time for me because of that focus," she said. "This is a way to do something that's festive and that is a present — it's a big present to the people of the community."